Central govt allocates power from its plants, DERC has no jurisdiction

The Power Ministry on Saturday clarified that allocation of power from central generating plants is done by the Union government to states on their request and the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) has no jurisdiction over those.

"Power from the Central Generating Stations (CGS) is allotted by the Central Government to the States on their request. The Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) has no jurisdiction in the matter," a power ministry statement said.

According to the statement, if any reallocation is to be done it is only on the request of the state government; and that also in case any other state is willing to take the surrendered power.

The DERC jurisdiction extends only to fixation of tariff and giving advice and direction to discoms of their state. The DERC cannot give any direction to the central or the state governments, it stated.

In case of NTPC Dadri-II Thermal Power Plant, the central government had made allocation of this power to Delhi and Uttar Pradesh vide letter dated 8th March, 2011, it stated.

The ministry said that "Satyendar Jain, Minister of Home, Health, Power, PWD and Industries, Government of NCT of Delhi, vide his DO letter dated 6th July, 2015 had surrendered power from 11 central generating stations which also include Dadri stage-II thermal power plant of NTPC, with immediate effect and to reallocate the same to other needy States. As per the said letter Delhi had surrendered full 735 MW allocation permanently."

Thereafter, the ministry stated that the Government of India wrote to all States on November 20, 2017, May 8, 2018, November 14, 2018, December 24, 2018 and February 6, 2019, that this power which has been surrendered by Delhi is available for reallocation.

"The Government of Delhi did not protest or withdraw their letter of surrender. The reallocation of power surrendered by Delhi was done to other states as and when other states requested for it," it explained.

The statement showed that since April 2016, the power was reallocated six times from Dadri stage-II plant from the share of Delhi.

The Delhi Government did not protest against these reallocation at any time, the ministry stated. The balance power from Dadri stage-II to an extent of 728 MW was available for reallocation and, accordingly, on 28th March, 2022, the same has been given to Haryana based on their request, it stated.

No request for withdrawal of the surrendered share had been received from Government of Delhi to the Government of India till March 28, 2022, it informed.

"It was only after reallocation of this power on March 28, 2022, that the Government of NCT of Delhi woke up on March 30, 2022 and wrote to power ministry to restore the Delhi share from Dadri stage II", it stated.

The Government of NCT of Delhi has quoted a letter from DERC dated 6th January, 2022 which was written to NTPC and a letter of DERC dated 14th October, 2021.

However, as pointed earlier, DERC has no jurisdiction in the matter of allocation of power from central generating stations, it stated.

"It may also be noted that Delhi have relinquished their share of 756 MW from Dadri-I indicating that this power is surplus. Thus, if Delhi is really under crisis and have concern about their consumers, they should not have surrendered their share from Dadri-I," the ministry explained.

As the reallocation to Haryana has already happened on March 28, 2022, any further reallocation can only be after hearing Haryana as Haryana is now also an affected party and any withdrawal would impact their power adequacy plans, the ministry stated.